Fuoco Fatuo

Fall into the Fuoco Fatuo void at Roadburn 2018

Fuoco Fatuo means will o’ the wisp in Italian, and that is probably the only glimmer of light you will find in anything that is related to this band from the Lombardian city of Varese. We’re still trying to extricate ourselves from the all-consuming black hole that is their latest album (their second overall), Backwater, released by Profound Lore this past April. Only four songs, spread over an hour like viscous black butter over stale black bread, and yet they seem to contain in them all the infinity of time, constantly sucked into their core of nothingness.

If you listen to Backwater casually (which will only be briefly possible, before it pulls you in too), it seems like there is no variation, no change, just a crawling mass of pachydermic doom slithering along like a roaming zombie walking a deserted country road. But after the wretched thing has worked its effect over you, after you’re already underneath the soil and all the vines have grown around you and immobilised you, you’ll understand.
Variation doesn’t matter. Rhythm doesn’t matter. Hell, existence doesn’t matter. It’s all about the relentlessly focused building of atmosphere, cold and distant, always more suffocating, always piling on itself, until the tension and the oppression is too much and you need a release, a release that never really comes unless the end of the album and the subsequent silence counts.

This is what happens while sitting comfortably at home just listening to the record. When the band actually steps on stage and starts playing in front of us, the very fabric of reality may be altered, we don’t know. But we’re anxious to find out!

Fuoco Fatuo will suck Roadburn 2018 and probably the whole of Tilburg with it into a cold, black void on Thursday, 19 April. Beware.